Julian’s frustration had simmered for days, slowly building to a boil.
Elara’s continued silence was a defiance he had never before encountered from her. The house, once his sanctuary, now felt like a sterile mausoleum echoing with her absence.
His well-ordered life was full of jarring little dissonances—the wrong brand of coffee, a poorly ironed shirt, the crushing silence where her soft humming used to be.
Then came her audacious performance on “A-Side.” He’d watched the clip online, his jaw tightening with every note she sang.
The vulnerability, the raw talent, the way the audience and judges reacted to her—it was galling.
She was creating a new identity, a new life, right before his eyes, a life that had absolutely nothing to do with him. It was a public declaration of independence, and he took it as a personal insult.
This wasn’t part of their deal. The deal was for her to wait quietly in the wings for six months. Not to become… Luna.
The final straw was the call from his grandmother. Beatrice had been curt, her voice laced with a disappointment so profound it felt like a physical blow. “You let her go, didn’t you, Julian? You foolish, foolish boy. You let go of the only real thing you had.”
He slammed the phone down, his carefully maintained composure shattering. This had gone on long enough.
He was going to put an end to this charade, right now. After making a single, angry phone call to a very reluctant Maya Khan, he had Elara’s new address.
He found her walking out of her apartment building, carrying a canvas tote bag filled with groceries.
She looked different. Thinner, perhaps, and paler than he remembered, but there was a new steel in her posture, a resolute set to her jaw that was entirely unfamiliar.
She stopped when she saw him standing there, his black Maybach parked haphazardly by the curb, a gleaming predator in the quiet, tree-lined street.
“Elara,” he said, his voice clipped and cold as he blocked her path. “This game is over. Get in the car. What in the world do you think you’re doing?”
She looked at him, and her eyes were the biggest shock of all. They were clear, calm, and utterly devoid of the soft, adoring light he was so accustomed to seeing there.
It was like looking at a polite, distant stranger.
“I’m living my life, Julian,” she said, her voice even. “I suggest you go and do the same with yours.”
He let out a short, incredulous laugh. The arrogance, the absolute certainty of his position, was his armor. “My life includes you. Our deal was for six months.”
“This… this television nonsense, this little apartment… it’s a cute tantrum, but it’s over now. You’re my wife. You will come home.” He reached for her arm, expecting her to yield as she always did.
She took a step back, pulling her arm away from his grasp. The movement was not sharp or angry; it was simple, decisive, and utterly final.
“No,” she said, her voice still quiet but as unyielding as granite. “I won’t. I signed the divorce papers, Julian. I gave you exactly what you asked for.”
“This is not a game. There is no ‘us’ in six months. There is no ‘us’ at all.”
For the first time since this ordeal began, he saw it. The unwavering finality in her eyes. The truth of her words crashed through his armor of arrogance and struck him with the force of a physical blow.
This wasn’t a strategy to make him jealous. This wasn’t a play for more money in the divorce. She was actually leaving him.
The foundational certainty that had underpinned his entire world for seven years—that Elara was his, that she would always be there, that she couldn’t leave him—cracked and then shattered into a thousand pieces.
A feeling he couldn’t name, a terrifying mix of disbelief and raw panic, clawed its way up his throat. He was Julian Croft. People didn’t leave him. Especially not her.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered, and the sound of his own voice, thin and laced with a tremor of real fear, shocked him.
Elara looked at the man she had loved for so long, the man who was now a stranger filled with a panicked rage.
There was no victory in this moment, only a deep, profound sadness for what they had lost, for what they had never truly had.
“I already have,” she said softly.
She stepped around him, her shoulder barely brushing his, and walked down the pavement towards her apartment building, her steps even and sure.
She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to.
She left him standing alone on the pavement, the setting sun casting his long, solitary shadow behind him, utterly, completely stunned.